THERE WAS A TIME WHEN CONSERVATION OFFICERS WERE A DIFFERENT BREED
Charlie Curran, the eighty-eight year old Big Piney river-guide whom I wrote about recently, made a trip over to the Osceola area of Truman Lake with a friend, to fish for catfish. He took with him twenty jugs, each with his name, address and phone number on them as the law requires. Early that morning he baited the hooks from each and set them out in a large area where he could watch them all. About mid-morning he saw a boat come in close to the outer ring of jugs and pick one up, leaving with it. About mid-afternoon Charlie and his friend picked up the 19 jugs that were left and though they looked for the 20th one it was gone for good. Charlie figured it had been taken by a fisherman who was in that boat. It wasn’t a fisherman!
Two weeks later Charlie got a letter from a Truman Lake game warden charging him with leaving a jug on the lake. The ticket enclosed said the offense had taken place at 9:45 that morning, about the same time Charlie had seen the boat circling his fishing area. Charlie called the agent who tried to justify what he had done by, saying the jug had been there for days because it had algae scum on it. All of Charlie’s jugs are like that because he has used them often on Lake of the Ozarks and Truman Lake as well.
Friends who fish on Truman say the game warden does that often when the address on the jug makes it unlikely that the fisherman will come back to fight the phony charge in court.
“People in Osceola do not speak very highly of him and I would have liked to fight that ticket,” Charlie told me. “But I couldn’t drive four hours just for the seventy-five dollars I might save.”
With the judge there in that county, Charlie would have wasted his time. That judge once put me in jail for stealing a gate I never saw. I will soon publish a book about that experience entitled “The Justice of St. Clair County.” I did some investigating and found out the MDC has built the judge a duck hunting marsh. What I uncovered about the MDC working with judges there is unbelievable.
Apparently the game warden has an easy work situation on Truman. Looks like he is a real enforcement officer when he can write lots of tickets to innocent people that way with no confrontation. He can just mail them!
I myself had a run-in with that game warden years back. I had come across a buck deer on Truman that was hung in a barbed-wire fence with both back legs broken. A Corps of Engineers Ranger and I was hunting ducks and I couldn’t stand to see the deer suffer so I killed him to put him out of his misery. Against my hunting partners advice I motored back to my pickup and drove into Osceola and called the agent to tell him where the deer was so the meat could be put to use.
He told me he wanted to write me a citation for what I had done, so therefore I needed to come to meet him. Some rather salty language took place from both of us. I hung up on him and went home that night to clean ducks, and I am sure he never went to find the deer. But knowing he wanted me to let the deer suffer told me something about him. What he did to Charlie tells me more about him. It is a shame because before him, back in the 1980’s that area had one of the best game wardens anyone could ask for.
In this day and time the MDC has many really bad agents. Some have broken the law and some have violated citizen’s rights. I can back that up with evidence and facts. But when I was young and the game wardens worked for the MO Conservation Commission, (MCC not MDC) I knew and idolized many of them. In next weeks column I will talk about some of those wardens and the great things they did when real game violators were dealt with rather than innocent and vulnerable people.
Don’t forget the big sale and the opening of my Big Piney Museum on Saturday June 28. Contact me for information at lightninridge47@gmail.comor P.O. Box 22, Bolivar, Mo 65613. Or call my office at 417 777 5227.
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